know that only the appearances remained, as in the Eucharist after the Consecration we seem to see the bread and wine.  Life was the poise of infinity, and I knew of no horizon, for I could look down upon the dawn.  It came two weeks ago Sunday in my heart.  I see the mystery of the Resurrection in its beauty, and why white lilies are its deepest symbol.  How can there be a prison or a cage?  Every twilight is a white horizon.  The gulls know that and the sea tonight has lost its sorrow.

August 21.

By sailboat to P——­ and G——­ with the silent man, returning with the stars.  Their hosting was like the flocking of wild geese, and they followed St. Francis of Assisi as a leader, the captain of the morning stars.  In the silence I heard the operation of the divine mathematics.

I loved those Chaldean seers to whom God talked directly and wrote His message upon the stars.  I lay prone on the deck looking upwards and fell into the Divine Ocean slowly.  The moon rode serenely to the southwest, and humanity was with me in the boat.  Navigators are now the only men left wise enough to follow the stars.  The sunpath was Jacob’s ladder, and the Aran islanders know its secret when they see Tir-n’an-Og in the west on calm sunset evenings.  The sea had my trust, eternal through yesterday’s experience, and I believe that if faith and good works required it of me, I could walk softly over it.  If the soul is to control the body, surely spiritual gravity should be able to overcome material gravity.  Certainly it would take more than the sea to quench my flame, if God made me worthy.

August 22.

I looked down from great heights today on all the little smiling intimacies.  They are like happy babies to me, and my speech should play with them, if I can ever become worthy of their simplicity.  The rhythm of all music is the systole and diastole of the Sacred Heart, which is the ebb and flow of an infinite ocean.  This is the meaning, I think, of the old Gaelic rune, Ri tragadh s’ri lionadh, mar a bha, mar a tha, mar a bhitheas gu bragh ri traghadh s’ri lionadh. (The ebb and the flow, as it was, as it is, as it ever shall be, the ebb and the flow.) The resolute gaze of the soul toward this in love constitutes prayer in its only form.  It shows blood to be the most rich and beautiful of human things, and its salt waves purify the flesh, as the salt waves of Gethsemane and Calvary redeemed the soul and its singing stars.

August 23.

My life so far has been a word, and not a deed.  But the world was not redeemed until the Word BECAME FLESH—­AND DWELT AMONGST US.  Mary S——­ met us on the roads today and said, “I hope that we’ll be meeting in Heaven, we seem to meet so often now.”  I sleep at night in a cruciform position adoring beauty with every faculty save my will, the most necessary of all.

August 24.

In the open today amid a hurricane of wind ...  I walked with a childish old man with a pleasant soul.  The wind brought meteor showers of beauty to the body.  It rained grace in the sky of noon.